


The Taste of You (In My Throat)

by half_sleeping



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-28
Updated: 2014-06-28
Packaged: 2018-02-06 13:34:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1859907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/half_sleeping/pseuds/half_sleeping
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twenty Drinks, and Kise Ryouta. Character study done for BPS's second 20 things challenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Taste of You (In My Throat)

**Aquafina**

"I’m in this one," says his sister, waving the magazine at the dining table.

"Ok," says Kise, who doesn’t care, as long as she gets it out of his cup. Boys sometimes trail his sisters down the street sadly holding out their namecards, or just pieces of paper with their details scrawled on. It’s pretty pathetic, but it works out well for them. If either of them have paid for anything since they hit puberty, Kise would be surprised to hear it. She glares at him and turns her lovely face to its best angle, matching the glossy image.

"You’re so young, though," his mom says, a token protest. Her eldest daughter had started at only two years older. She’s away now, doing- _whatever_ it is she’s doing, instead of being with them.

"It’s just being a reader model," says his sister, complacently. "It’s best to start young."

**Dasani**

"They need a boy," she says, cornering Kise on the landing. He’s outgrown her in the last month, but it still doesn’t feel like it. Mom had bought his Teikou uniform even larger, to grow into. "You call this number, and you tell them I sent you."

"Do I have a choice?" says Kise, trying to edge around her. He wanted to say that he didn’t need a magazine to tell him he was good-looking, not the way she seemed to, but to do this was to court certain death.

"No," she says. "You’re not joining a club, right?"

**Gatorade**

Kise joins the baseball team. Then the football team. Then the volleyball team. Then american football, then track and field, before they begin to realise that Kise Ryouta isn’t going to stick around, no matter how much they beg him to.

Sports drink is sickly sweet on his tongue. He gets tired of the taste too-quickly, and has to rinse it from his mouth.

**Champagne**

He’s only ever drunk alcohol before out with his family, though he doesn’t say that, because sips of wine out of his parents’ glasses at french restaurants probably don’t count, and nor does the time at a family friend’s house when Kise, six, got hold of a half-empty cocktail glass and was discovered three hours later having thrown up behind the settee and then settled down to sleep. His oldest sister had held him close to her on the drive home with his parents torn between amusement and chagrin, her hand soft in his hair.

This tastes like neither of those times. It’s light, not too sweet, and the way the bubbles tickle his throat make him laugh, curling his fingers around the stem as elegantly as an advertisement.

The rest of the models, giggly already with having snuck a thirteen year old past the bouncer, urge him to drink again.

**Mets Grapefuit**

After extra practice, Kise follows Aomine Daiki out to the vending machines. Aomine, full of his own importance as a senior, buys two cans and throws one to Kise, before Kise can say that he never drinks soda because it’s full of sugar and it would rot his perfect teeth.

Aomine chugs his, crushes the can in one hand and then throws it into the trash without looking.

It’s the coolest thing Kise has ever seen.

**Chuuhai**

"I’m _never drinking again_ ,” moans his sister, pressed against the wall. Kise bangs open the door, super loudly.

"Will you keep it down?" says Kise. "I have morning practice, you know." He escapes back to his room before she can get him.

"He’s dead," mutters his sister, to the wall. "I THOUGHT YOU QUIT YOUR CLUB," she hollers back.

"I have to be up at SIX-THIRTY," Kise wails, and buries his head in his bed.

**Shiruko**

Midorimachi is almost as much of a nag as the clingiest non-girlfriend Kise has ever had, on at the regulars at every moment. He speaks a language Kise barely understands, and utterly foreign: that of achievements and diligence and hard, hard work. _Grades_ , for crying out loud. As though boys like Kise need to study, as though it’s worth anything, set against all else the world has to offer them both.

Even Akashichi’s casual expertise is more familiar than this, if also incredibly terrifying. Kise doesn’t like things that are too sweet, they’re so uncool.

**Punishment Drink**

”Why couldn’t I drink this in the other room?” asks Kise. It’s bubbling. Why is it bubbling?

"None of us wanted to touch it," murmurs Kuroko. Parts of it are a dark murky green like snot, and some parts solid white. Not white-coloured. White solids.

"And you want me to drink this?" demands Kise, trying to back out of the kitchen. Murasakibara stops him. Kise’s eyes dart madly around the room. Midorima is at the window. There’s no escape.

"You’re the newest regular," says Aomine, grinning madly. He wraps Kise’s hand around the glass. It doesn’t make it all the way around. "Drink up."

"Did Kurokochi have to drink this?" says Kise. The glass is sweating aggressively all over his hand.

"Yes," says Kuroko.

We thought he would die,” reminiscences Murasakibara, eyeing the glass with a glint of unholy glee.

"Look, Satsuki can only keep the Coach busy for so long," says Aomine, who has out his phone now. "You in or out, rookie?"

Kise pinches his nose and says, “If I die, cry for me Kurokochi.”

Kuroko doesn’t hesitate for a second. “No.”

**Aquarius**

After the interview, the nice reporter lady, beaming a lot at them, opens up a bag of sporting goodies and offers them their pick of swag. Teikou’s yearly interview is a given, and after making them sit still for so long to get every single picture, they’re rewarded with treats and praise. It’s remarkably effective.

Aominechi trades Kurokochi three powdered Pocari packets for a mini tube of muscle relaxant. Midorimachi has three different rolls of sports tape, arranged on his lucky pen in order of colour.

Kise only has one pack of sports drink, taken out of embarrassment more than anything else. He offers it to Kuroko, and later finds his teammate- utterly without shame- eating the powder from the packet like candy.

Kuroko lets Kise have a taste, an indirect-indirect-indirect-indirect kiss, like cootie-ception. It tastes like nothing on his tongue.

**Honey Gloop**

It’s an away game before the regulars are obliged to deal without either Teikou’s third or second manager for a few matches. Momoichi is the only manager who comes along, her notebook full of data and the video camera seemingly glued to her hand.

Kise’s favourite part of the honey lemons is to upturn the box and let the liquid drip into his mouth. It looks cool, and that’s the best part, much better than having to be Kurokochi, chewing manfully through the uncut rind, or Aominechi, throwing uneaten lemons out the window. He flicks a wink to Momoichi’s hopeful face, and prepares to take his shot.

"Ki-chan!" Momoi cries. "Ki-chan! Help! He’s choking!"

**Pocari**

When the first fruits of team sponsorship show up, courtesy of the Japan Basketball Association, the regulars are presented with the shining whites of the bags and towels with the Teikou logos, the matching team shoes.

"What the hell’s the point of _empty_ Pocari bottles?” says Aomine, completely unimpressed. Kise can size up a swag bag at a glance, but still he digs through them until Midorima points out, irritated, that they’re all going to be the same.

Kise uses his until he loses it, marked with his name to make sure he won’t mix it up with anyone else’s.

**Milk**

"Oh, come on," says Kise, when Momoichi puts the carton on his lunch tray. Full-fat? _Full-fat_?

"Team policy, Ki-chan!" she chirps. "Look, Akashi-kun and Tetsu-kun have finished all theirs!"

"But _they_ need it,” whines Kise. Then freezes.

Neither of them _say_ anything, though Midorimachi’s comically frozen expression and Aominechi’s look of dawning awe say all the things Akashichi and Kurokochi don’t voice… right then.

**Hot Chocolate**

Kise will never know what the girls promise Murasakibarachi to get him in that dress, but they do, and the school floods with pictures of him serving drinks in his prince costume. Kise manages a picture-perfect barista, though he’s never going to live it down among the guys.

HIs sister puts the picture into the magazine clippings Kise’s manager keeps for him, and captions it, _the last happy summer_ , before Kise will have to crack down to high school exams and for when she wants him to focus on his modelling, which he’s been letting slip.

Kise really hates sweet stuff. The aftertaste is worst of all.

**Vanilla Shakes**

Kise checks the Maji Burger nearest the school, just in case Kurokochi is skipping school in there, but if he is, Kise doesn’t see him.

Message after message, wrappers piling up on the tray in front of Kise, Kuroko doesn’t reply or appear.

He spent money on it, so Kise sips at the milkshake, but doesn’t finish it. Too sweet to choke down.

**Evian**

He comes out of the fridge to the cool gaze of his sister, her painted nails tapping on her water bottle,

"That isn’t your uniform," she observes. "No practice today?" She hands him the bottle, and he twists the cap off for her. Then he drinks it himself.

"Hey!" she says.

Kise shrugs. “I went out,” he said.

**Beer**

Kise is waiting for the girls to come out of the bathroom- why do they always go in packs?- when another karaoke room opens in a rush of sound and a girl staggers out, holding onto the wall and laughing to herself.

Kise wrinkles his nose as she sidles past him. The smell of malt and bitterness is obvious even from all the way over here.

Haizaki swaggers out, and the smell gets even stronger. He slides his arm around the girl’s waist and murmurs into her neck. The girls come out and collect Kise before Haizaki can see him, but not before Kise sees Haizaki draw another can out of his bag, and crack it with one hand.

**Perrier**

_God_ , when did modelling become so _boring_?

**San Pellegrino**

Kise asks for brochures from every school that scouts him, and then picks by uniform, because what the hell else is there?

Kaijou High School’s white and blue, bright and blue, won’t remind him of Teikou at all.

Kanagawa’s a good area. Kise will have lots of great places to visit instead of going to practice, and no one to run into around there.

**Water**

Kise escapes while the sempai send off Seirin, abjured to wash his face before he disgraces the lot of them in front of their mortal sporting enemies. Again.

He splashes water on his face, feeling the cool shock of it on his heated skin. He tastes metal, and earth, and the faint tang of Kanagawa water, and salt, sweet on the cracks of his lips.

**That Beautiful Sweet Liquid of LIfe**

Kise throws himself onto the kitchen counter and gasps dramatically until his sister takes pity and pushes a bottle over to him. “You’re up early,” she says.

“I was running,” says Kise with dignity, once he’s glugged down half the litre. And realised she’s his other sister, looking at him all sweaty and uncool.

“I thought you didn’t like Dasani,” she observes. He probably smells, too. She hugs him, even so.

“I didn’t even notice,” says Kise, with mild surprise.


End file.
